Software

May 29th, 2020

Today I'm delighted to announce the first release of Magnificent Ball, a modern adaptation of Crillion for macOS. For those not familiar with the concept, players use a bouncing ball to remove coloured blocks from a variety of different levels while avoiding obstacles. It is available immediately from the Mac App Store.

Magnificent Ball is my first foray into game development in more than twenty years. If it succeeds then I might remake some of my older titles with the aid of videos. The Internet never forgets!

May 19th, 2020

Audio Overload 2.2.1 is now available. The new release adds support for a few additional types of .vgm file, and fixes a number of minor bugs.

May 15th, 2020

Cacophony 2.0.1 is now available. This release adds a "Save Selection As" command and resolves a cosmetic bug when deleting the final portion of an audio file. The latter came to light when editing the soundtrack for a rather jolly organ video.

May 6th, 2020

I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of Audio Overload 2.2 for macOS. This release brings a few small changes to the interface, higher resolution icons, and controls for adjusting playback speed and pitch. I've also moved distribution to the Mac App Store for ease of installation and updating.

May 2nd, 2020

Eighteen years ago I developed a basic sound editor as a university project. The original version of Cacophony was not compatible with OS X 10.7, and while I began work on a Cocoa-based rewrite it quickly fell by the wayside due to other priorities. I continued to poke around with it on occasion, but it was a private sandbox project rather than something I that I expected to see the light of day.

On March 27th, Ireland went into lockdown, gifting me a few hours each evening (and entire weekends) with no scheduled activity. I decided to put the lion's share of this time into getting the code to a level where it could be released to the general public, and today I can share the results: Cacophony 2.0 is now available from the Mac App Store.

I've been using it myself over the last while in the production of music videos for my church, and I can't wait to see (and hear) what other people do with it.

April 28th, 2020

BSNES v0.7.1 is now available. This release resolves a compatibility issue with macOS Catalina and adds upscaled icons for people using retina displays.

December 14th, 2019

I'm delighted to announce that a major update for my emulator shell is now available, adding support for macOS Catalina and significantly improving support for macOS Mojave. The links on the right hand side of this page have been updated.

The main changes in this release are as follows:

Added new Metal video renderer. The old OpenGL code has been removed.

Fixed a number of visual glitches in the Preferences window on newer systems.

Fixed a number of issues with video display on newer systems.

Added support for Dark Mode on newer systems.

Added code to stop the display going to sleep when an emulator is running.

(EE only) Fixed a typo that made the Xbox 360 Controller family unusable with Emulator Enhancer. This will likely resolve issues with other analog controllers too.

(EE only) Fixed an issue where establishing a network connection sometimes failed for no reason.

(EE only) Resolved an issue where Quick Freeze (etc) could only ever be used once from a USB controller.

(EE only) Switched payment processing system from eSellerate to Paddle. Please note that existing EE3 serial numbers will not work in this release. To upgrade, go through the purchase process as normal but enter your valid EE3 serial number in the coupon code field; this will allow you to complete the registration process at no cost.

There are also a few minor changes to individual emulators, as follows:

(fMSX) Updated to core version 5.4.

(Handy) Added a button to rotate the display.

(Handy) Fixed an error in the display of the lynxboot.img path.

(Horizon) Added a display of the file path to I/O error messages.

(Neopocott) Added an option to force Black & White mode.

(O2Em) Fixed a keyboard mapping bug that made the letter 'A' unusable.

(TEO, Thom) Added missing "CNT" key mapping.

Separately, pursuant to the request of Kev Thacker I have retired my macOS port of Arnold. Kev is now maintaining his own build, and I'd encourage readers to migrate as it has some significant improvements to the underlying CPC emulation that were not available at the time my version was developed.

November 2nd, 2019

I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of Audio Overload 2.1 for macOS. The main change in this release is a 64-bit rewrite of the user interface code, though I have made some additional changes under the bonnet as follows:

Overhauled the Orchestra-90 playback code. The result isn't perfect yet but it sounds far closer to the real thing than in previous releases. I'd like to acknowledge Jon Bokelman for providing invaluable assistance with my understanding of the format.

Added support for newer versions of the VGM file format, and hooked up a number of chips that were already supported for other file formats. VGM playback now supports the AY8910, HuC6280, SAA1099, SN76496, Y8950, YM2149, YM2151, YM2203, YM2610, YM2612, YM3526, and YM3812. Files using unsupported chips will display a warning.

Fixed a divide by zero crash in the MOD playback code.

Added a new "Aggressive Amplification" option. This is a variant on the existing normalise option that will keep the volume level as loud as possible using a rolling two second window. This may be useful for tracks with dramatic volume changes; it is turned off by default.

Exporting of WAV files will now automatically stop if the end of the song is reached and/or there is no output for five seconds.

Updated to zlib 1.2.8.

I'd also like to share a status update on updated versions of my various emulator ports. The metal-based video renderer is working after a fashion, but there are some problems with it that are holding up a new public release. Work continues, and should increase in pace now that I've managed to get Audio Overload out the door. I'll share more updates as soon as I can.

April 2nd, 2019

Two weeks ago I received an email advising me of the closure of eSellerate, a payment processing platform used by all existing versions of Emulator Enhancer. As a direct consequence of this I'm sorry to announce that after June 30th, 2019 it will no longer be possible to purchase licenses for Emulator Enhancer releases up to and including v3.0.1. It may or may not be possible to reactivate existing licenses after that date; this will depend on whether the eSellerate team keep their back end system online after the ability to place new orders has been turned off.

Though it is not ready as of this writing my hope is that I'll be in a position to put out an updated version of Emulator Enhancer with a different payment provider prior to the proverbial hammer falling. As promised last November this update will be provided free of charge to all those with valid v3.x licenses. The new release and associated emulators will require a Mac that supports macOS Mojave; if you have an older machine and you've been holding off buying a license then I'd encourage you to do so before the opportunity goes away forever.

November 18th, 2018

The emulators on this site have some minor visual glitches under macOS Mojave. I was hopping to release a quick fix, but after some investigation it has become apparent that full resolution will require migrating the existing video renderer to Metal. This work is now in progress, and while I don't have a release date or even a timeline yet I can say that the changes will be a free upgrade for all existing Emulator Enhancer 3 customers.

May 26th, 2018

Today marks the release of Brain Box v1.0, a set of educational games aimed primarily at children, though equally good for those of other ages seeking some mentally stimulating procrastination. The current release features seven games, and if successful I plan to add more in due course.

Added a keyboard override for rotation if the emulator fails to switch properly.

Saved states are now compressed with gzip.

March 10th, 2018

After a decade-long hiatus I'm delighted to announce new releases of the twenty-seven different emulator projects that I maintained during the noughties. The updates utilise a new 64-bit Cocoa replacement for my shell library that I've been slowly putting together over the last few years. I appreciate I'm a little behind the times (people who point this out will be nominated for the ice bucket challenge) but I figure that it's better to release late than never. They are designed to run on macOS 10.11 and later, and my plan is to keep that minimum requirement for the foreseeable future as my elderly but perfectly serviceable Mac Pro doesn't support anything newer.

As in times past the standard versions of these ports are completely free. Those of you who want more functionality have the option of installing Emulator Enhancer 3.0, which adds a number of extra features including HID device support, Full Screen Mode, Network Play, and a graphical Recent Games window. EE3 is available at no charge to EE2 customers who purchased on or after January 1, 2017.

December 23rd, 2017

I’m trying to get back in touch with Hiroki Kobayashi, once known as PB1400c, and administrator of an Japanese emulation page. The last email I have is @nn.iij4u.or.jp and is bouncing. If anyone knows him please put us in contact.

Software

Emulators:

Note that the current releases of these projects all require Mac OS X 10.11 or later. Older releases are available from the archive but are strictly unsupported.